by ·Comments Off on Pink Flamingos (1972, John Waters)

Even lower-fi than expected. With a proper audience it’s probably more infectious than tedious. All this time I’ve avoid the acclaimed 1970s movie Cockfighter on account of chicken torture, then I stumble into the acclaimed 1970s movie Pink Flamingos with advance warning about shit-eating but no notice that a chicken gets fucked to death.

“How can a couch be out of order?” Divine and her ma Edie and roomie Mary are local menaces, while Mink and David are jealous pervert neighbors looking for an advantage over the notorious Divine. They try to ambush our heroes, but Divine fucks her son(?), eats shit, murders her rivals and wins the day. After Divine goes feral on a hot dog patron, Waters plays “The Girl Can’t Help It.” Also the scene where police are called to Divine’s trailer, and a gang of locals ambush and devour them was pretty good.

by ·Comments Off on Land of Silence and Darkness (1971, Werner Herzog)

We follow Fini, a deaf/blind advocate who visits her people in different family and institutional situations. It’s almost a public-service issues doc, showing sad disabled people and explaining how systems have failed them. But ever since watching Little Dieter I’ve known that Herzog likes to take his doc subjects to unusual places, and who else would take a party of blind women to a cactus garden?

Vogel: “confirms Herzog as the mysterious new humanist of the 1970s, light-years removed from the sentimentality of the Italian neorealists and the simplistic propaganda of untalented documentary film radicals.”

Hand communication:

by ·Comments Off on Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974, Francesco Barilli)

Silvia runs a lab of brightly colored liquids in bubbly beakers, and in the evenings she alienates her boyfriend then has traumatic flashbacks to the time she saw her mom having sex with some guy. Paura all around. You gotta watch at least one nonsensical Italian movie per shocktober.

Finally something happens: friend Francesca shows up dead in the tub. “They said the water must’ve been too hot… her heart couldn’t handle it.” Then Silvia splits in two, her adult and child selves having a conversation like the poster of The Tale. Young Self kills the neighbor’s cat, Older Self kills the neighbor. They murder a few more sexual harassers, and all seems to be going well, then Young Self pushes them off a roof, leading to a culty final scene where the men she’d killed gather around her body and eat her guts.

Barilli also made Hotel Fear (Pensione paura), his cowriter worked on Who Saw Her Die?, and the DP shot the Carmelo Bene movies and Padre Padrone. Older Self is Four Flies star Mimsy Farmer, and oh no, Young Self grew up to star in Ghosthouse.

Follow the trail to the titular perfume:

by ·Comments Off on Wake In Fright (1971, Ted Kotcheff)

A teacher attempts to go on holiday, but unfortunately he is the dumbest, drunkest idiot in all Australia. He is Gary “U.S.” Bond of Growing Pains (the Hammer horror, not the comedy series), a Blind Faith fan who hates his job and hates ordinary fuckin’ people. During a train layover in a thriving town, he gets sucked into a game of high stakes heads-or-tails and loses all his vacation money so has to look for work instead of proceeding to the shore. But some locals are very happy to host the stranger and keep him drunk. White-suited Tim’s daughter Janette wants to make out with the newcomer, but he throws up instead. Finally he settles for having a bromance with Donald Pleasance, the only other intellectual in Australia. He never actually wakes in fright, but with twenty minutes left he wakes in disgust. Gary escapes, but continuing to be an idiot he accidentally hitches a ride to the town he just left, then thinks he has to kill Pleasance, or maybe himself. Not a horror movie, it turns out (unless you count the scene where a bunch of kangaroos are shot and stabbed to death), just another in a long line of Australian movies about how it brutally sucks to live in Australia.

How can you hate a country whose only features are cockatoos and drinking?

by ·Comments Off on Salem’s Lot (1979, Tobe Hooper)

A TV movie that feels like a TV movie, except for a couple moments of the most nightmarish imagery which would stick in my head for the decade between when I first watched this until I guess Coppola’s Dracula.

But mostly it’s a TV movie, a version of Needful Things where everyone is fascinated with new shopkeeper James “Bigger Than Life” Mason, but he doesn’t sell anything and nothing happens, then eventually in the second half his Nosferatu boss arrives to kill everybody. First we’ve gotta spend a lot of time with writer Ben (played by a TV cop) fascinated with a house in town. “There’s a connection, I just know it,” says a fat cop about Ben and the house, but Ben already told us the connection, why don’t they ask him? Then there’s high schooler Mark (later of Enemy Mine) – they didn’t know about autism in 1979 but this kid loves monster movies and models and “keeps his feelings in hand.” In the end Ben and Mark will team up to defeat evil, two heroes with haircuts for which they both should be embarrassed.

Meanwhile we’ve got three hours to fill, so Ben finds himself a girl as soon as he gets into town (Bonnie Bedelia of Needful Things, haha), angering her dad Dr. Bill (head priest of Exorcist III) and her ex Ned, who punches Ben straight into the hospital. George Dzundza (Species II) is gonna murder realtor boss Fred Willard for cheating with his wife Julie Cobb (of a three-hour Brave New World), but lets Willard escape, to be instantly killed by yard monsters. Gravedigger Mike of Lawnmower Man gets bit (I saw him a couple days ago in a Rob Zombie movie), making his whitehair friend Lew Ayres (Omen II) sad.

Tobe (who would soon make Poltergeist) lingers on the writer thinking a house is evil, and maybe so, but I think it’s the foreign Nosferatu that is more evil here. It kills Ned at least, then our guys shoot James Mason to death (he’s not even a vampire), burn down the town, and leave the girl behind. I watched the sequel relatively recently, do not remember the Rob Lowe/Rutger Hauer remake, or the version last year that everyone hated.

And especially featuring Elisha Cook Jr. as the town drunk:

This movie is terrific at having characters stand next to their names

I don’t get the version of christianity where a popsicle stick crucifix can ward off evil

by ·Comments Off on 1975 Shorts

Firing Range aka Polygon (Anatoliy Petrov)

Professor’s son died in colonial wars, the prof invents an autonomous tank that can detect fear and sets it loose on his own army in revenge. Nice little sci-fi war drama, too bad about the grotesque rotoscoping. Not the Old Man and the Sea guy, this is a different Petrov, and okay it’s from 1977 not ’75, sometimes my dates are off.

–
Great (Bob Godfrey)

Comic attack on the British empire, very good illustrations with Monty Python-style motion gives way to slightly more traditional animation full of newspaper-caricature characters, and settles into focus on Brunel, a builder of very large bridges and ships, with photographed segments and musical numbers. Not one of my favorite things, but I also believe there should be more farcical musical bio-pics of obscure historical figures. Won the oscar over Sisyphus and a Bafta over Caroline Leaf. A very naughty Brit, Bob is also known for Instant Sex and Kama Sutra Rides Again.

–
Perspectives (Georges Schwizgebel)

Roughly drawn figures keep changing form and direction over nice colored backgrounds and oppressive piano music.

–
Ventana (Claudio Caldini)

Thin rectangles flit past over some ambient music. Made me sleepy.

–
Sincerity II (Stan Brakhage)

Playing with the dog in the yard, playing with the wife in bed. I thought my copy was faded and orange with exposure problems, but sometimes you’ll get a clear, balanced shot or a strong blue-green, so who knows. Sincerity was Stan’s multi-part “autobiography” composed of footage shot by himself and friends. With ten minutes left we start seeing Stan himself, and the editing goes haywire. Naked children, a family train vacation, some trick photography play with the kids, a visit to Canyon Cinema. Silent; I listened to the latest Mary Halvorson album since her group is playing Roulette tonight.

–
The Seasons (Artavazd Peleshian)

Opens alarmingly with a man and a sheep going over a waterfall. Then the frame is taken over by clouds, then a mountain – maybe the title was mistranslated from The Elements. Cattle and sheep drive, men and horses getting a truck unstuck from rainy mud, a hay-sledding party, a sheep-sledding party. After all the hard work, everyone (even the sheep) get fancied up for the wedding of the man from the waterfall scene. No narration, but a couple of intertitles – postsync sound and nice orchestral score. Ah, this is Armenia, the title refers to the Vivaldi music, and it’s shot by The Color of Armenian Land director Vartanov.

by ·Comments Off on Que Hacer (1970, Ruiz & Landau & Serrano)

I’m up to the “Left and Revolutionary Cinema” chapter of the Vogel book. Creating a fictional scenario around a real election with pop-up folk songs by Country Joe & The Fish – a Chilean Medium Cool, but not really visually or narratively interesting. Suzanne leans communist, her friends lean militant, they ask for her help kidnapping Balding Martin who has been following her around, but the plot goes bad due to a dirty informant and people get shot by the police.

Suzanne and her doomed commie conspirator friend:

Nice to have the DVD interview with Landau, who’s the source of the “CHILL-y-un” pronunciation. He says it was semi-improvised from a written framework with doc footage added, admits stealing from Brecht and Godard, doesn’t mention Medium Cool, though Landau and Wexler would codirect a film in Chile the following year so surely that came up. Balding Martin starred in Beware! The Blob the same year, popped up in minor roles in Hollywood pictures, just about everyone else showed up in the very early (and very late) Ruiz films. If the wikis can be believed, this played Cannes Director’s Fortnight with Emitai, Land of Silence and Darkness, Oshima’s Dear Summer Sister, The Death of Maria Malibran, and Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

by ·Comments Off on The Big Mess (1971, Alexander Kluge)

Space explorers set out to find a home beyond the reach of monopolist capitalism – sounds serious, but the actors in the rebel mission’s crew are absolutely goofing around. Early on, their ship catches fire and they’re not sure whether to try to save it or to sell it for scrap.

Some good montage, and the lo-fi outer space effects are fun, but the actors reading from scripts with indifferent blocking is too much. I guess this is self-consciously bad, but it is bad. Raymond Gun-Virus speaks for us all: “Extra .5 star for the 100+ individually designed intertitles and a live-in-space performance by Amon Düül II.”

My first by film-philospher Kluge, falling somewhere in the middle of his features both chronologically and in popularity. I don’t know what his whole deal is yet, besides that his career spans from Lang’s latest works to our all-digital present, and Cornell calls him “the German Godard.” This movie’s janky space-travel aspect reminds me of Ga-Ga, which I loved – am I not supposed to be watching more of Szulkin’s weird sci-fi films instead of digging up new German nonsense?

Hark Bohm, Fassbinder regular and a doctor in Underground:

by ·Comments Off on Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975, Rainer Fassbinder)

Mother K receives a bit of bad news: her husband went to work and murderer-suicided his boss. She gathers the family (son Ernst and his wife Irm Hermann, dancer daughter Corinna), and their situation attracts reporter Jorg and a communist couple. Everyone involved exploits the tragedy in their own way, also a sharp movie about political fractures within families.

L-R: Mother K, son, Irm, bearer of bad news

Communists:

Mom is the lead from Fear Eats the Soul in another big role. Ernst (star of Fear of Fear the same year) and wife Irm Hermann get the hell out of there and return pregnant. Mom’s daughter Ingrid Caven (a Year with 13 Moons star and a Suspiria Remake teacher) shacks up with the reporter (the large-faced star of Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day) and finds a job in town playing off her family’s infamy. After the daughter leaves, mom calls up communists Peeping Tom and Petra von Kant, who were the last people to be nice to her, but she wants real action while they say things like “it’s a slow process / we can’t work miracles / we won’t forget you.” Falling in with increasingly radical groups, Mother K meets anarchist Horst (Matthias Fuchs of Decoder) whose plan is to bring guns to the newspaper and demand a retraction of the reporter’s sensationalist article. We get a couple of possible ways out of this: a bloody shootout via intertitle, then a happy fantasy where Mother K survives, is abandoned by everyone again, and meets a nice lonely man.

dancer, reporter: